Hello, I have lived here in the Czech Republic for the last year and have just spent the last hour looking for somewhere on the Internet to vent my hate and frustration for this country. Funnily enough I have found only this site and I suspect the reason is so that not many people will ever find out about the real Czech Republic. There is no denying the country itself is very beautiful but the people are all theiving robbing lying s... excuse my French... all of them... this is not a generalization... every single mother er here is out to re-leave you of your money in some way or another. While this is not so much of a problem for the tourists (most of them are from countries where everything is more expensive than here, so they don't check there change or even work out how much they are actually spending in there own currency), it is a big problem if you live and work here (and are a reasonable honest person!!).
I moved here over a year ago, and the first 2 months i did not bother to get a job as i had just left a rather well paying job. In this time i had my phone robbed (by a guy who i'd bought a beer for and lent my phone too!!- naive or ?), was pick pocketed and ripped off in so many bars and restaurants to numerous to list. I then proceeded to get a job in a bar. Most expats here do one of the following jobs. Bar work in expat type bar. English Teaching (ing joke... they train idiots to teach, and dilute the work force with fools who just live here and want to get pissed with no real clue for what they are doing). and finally call centres (another ing joke.... cheap labour for BT to sell broadband in a country (England) that already has its full quota of broadband users... so the poor fools have to use all sorts of lowlife tricks to convince some old age pensioner that they need broadband just so they can meet there quota and keep there job and go and get pissed later on.
As a barman i have seen and heard lots of things (Tricks). Some which the staff i worked with did to customers just to make some money (the average wage in a bar is between 60CZK and 100CZK an hour.) Like America you are depending on tips to make a living. however most of the expat bars (the only place you can work as you need to speak Czech (one of the most difficult languages to learn) to work anywhere else) are very expensive and so when the tourist (most expats and locals won't drink there) gets there bill and they realise how badly they have been ripped off will not leave a tip. this means the greedier worker has to be more creative in order to make more money. another problem with the tourist is after spending a few day in Prague and getting ripped off a lot they start to wise up and become quite angry towards anyone serving them (This i understand), however its a cycle of crap that goes around and around. so for instance a group of lads on there 3rd day in Prague decide to leave the bar without paying just because they've been robbed so much throughout the week(end) then the poor bastard serving them has to foot there bill (which is usually at least a quarter of your weeks wages, because lads in a group are much braver at doing such things).... poor bastard then decides he needs to make his money back to pay his rent or whatever and decides to rip someone else off. the only people who do well in this country are the owners of the bars, Taxi drivers (I'm sure you've heard of these ers already), the police (i have been real lucky here, but have heard stories) and the government who as far as i can see, seem to encourage this kind of mentality in its people. People believe this country to be a cheap holiday... they are so wrong its unbelievable. From the moment you get off the plane, train or whatever, you will be robbed in some way, no 2 ways about it.
After realising that Prague was full of this i decided it would be a good idea to get the hell out of this hole of a country, but before i did i decided it would be horribly wrong of me to base all of my opinions of this country and these people based on one single year in its capitol (which has a slightly dubious name anyway), so myself and my girlfriend decided to get a tent and see what other things this country has to offer. more ing thieves and robbers, just that they are little bit nicer and craftier with re-leaving you of your cash. You do not get what you pay for and there are hidden extras everywhere. after 2 weeks travelling outside of Prague I'd rather to go back, because at least in Prague the robbery is more in your face and after a while, easier to adjust to. We have been to 4 camping sites since leaving Prague and all but one where dodgy in some way. one didn't even have drinking water and the web page where we found it had very inaccurate information. also, finding any decent information from forums or other expats is quite difficult and i believe this is because any critical comments or negative information is deleted from the site and all the others (maybe 1 or 2 comments) are left.
In order to enjoy this country you need a bucket load of cash and no cares if someone tries stealing it from you, or you need to join in on the act of robbing the tourists. Better still, you want to enjoy this country... go to Austria.
